Mar 17-23: Marzo Madness

The week started out surprisingly slow for me. On Monday, per usual, I went to the colegio. Upon arriving, I was told that students only had a half day because of teachers’ meetings in the afternoon. I didn’t have anything super rigid planned for the day, but I didn’t realize it’d be so truncated for the students. Further inhibiting my progress, there wasn’t any internet, so there was only so much I could do planning-wise as well. That afternoon, I attended a virtual meeting from another non-profit organization that Peace Corps frequently collaborates with to promote recreation abroad. Later in the week, I met with a group of 11th graders who are participating in Servicio Comunal Estudiantil, the community service program required for graduation. This group of students will help me lead a community-wide running club in the coming months, something obviously that’ll be near and dear to my heart as a runner. They brainstormed club names, meeting times, routes, publicity strategies, etc in our initial meeting. In such a large, urban community, these student outreach will be critical in growing the club.

At the escuela, I spent the majority of my time in the biblioteca. I worked with the librarian to further plan out our international club, called Amigos Sin Fronteras.I designed brief presentations on countries that hold particular significance to Costa Rica. Some examples of materials I developed included trivia questions and bingo boards for students. This club probably won’t take off until around June, but because I’ll be busy with other clubs and activities, we are trying to get a head start of planning. Also at the elementary school, on Thursday, they held an assembly commemorating the Battle of Santa Rosa, which you can read about in my most recent sidebar blog.

Away from my community, March Madness was in full swing, so I was certainly glued into that. I also went into San Jose on Saturday where a large group of Peace Corps Volunteers spanning a few different cohorts gathered at La Sabana park to hang out at a food truck festival and play soccer and frisbee. Unfortunately, because I'm addicted to watching my favorite sports teams, I had to sneak off early to watch Arkansas' Round of 32 game against St. John's in a nearby McDonald's that had free wifi for streaming. (Fortunately, they pulled off a massive win and made my self-exile from the group of volunteers worth it).

Later on Saturday, I traveled with another Peace Corps Volunteer from my cohort to his site, which is a small town about an hour south of mine. His host family was nice enough to let me stay the night, and it was neat to see another Peace Corps community, especially a more rural one compared to mine. His site is so small that sometimes the buses can be inconsistent, which we learned the hard way. As sometimes happens in Costa Rica, the bus we anticipated taking to his site simply never showed up in San Jose. Thus, we had to take a bus to a different town about 5 miles away and trek the rest of the way to his community. In all honesty, it was a beautiful evening to get some extra steps in and added to the adventure. The next morning, he showed me his town, we went on a short hike, and grabbed lunch at a new restaurant on the hiking trail that specializes in American food. It was great to hang out with him in the campo and to take a break from the ciudad for a little bit.